Some days that have passed since The Telegraph released the full details of its MPs expenses investigation, “setting the record straight” after the House of Commons released its own, censored version. Although it is a little shabby that the newspaper suddenly appears to be bothered about releasing information in full, but only after milking the story for an entire month’s-worth of front-page scoops, the details of what our elected representatives are spending their (our?) money on is still providing some fascinating tidbits. The expenses scandal really is the gift that just keeps on giving.
While second-home flipping and suspect renting arrangements are the stuff of which headlines are made, public scrutiny of expenses has revealed the weird and wonderful reality of some of our MPs. Let’s take…oh, I don’t know, David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth. David Tredinnick has superb form in the field of, well, being an idiot. Over the years he has come out with torrents of rubbish, popping up to add his own ridiculous noise to any debate on homeopathy, alternative medicine or other new-age nonsense. In a debate on NHS homeopathy funding last year, his indignant support of public money being used to fund pseudoscience prompted one of my favourite ever soundbites from the House, from Rob Marris MP:
“In this country we use a lot of recycled water, but I am surprised that water, which supposedly has a memory, does not have a memory of the faeces that were in it and thereby make us all sick. My right hon. Friend has referred to research, but against that background is she aware of any peer-reviewed medical research that indicates that homeopathic medicine works through anything other than a placebo effect?”
This is about as complete a dismissal of a patently inane argument as I have ever come across. However, Tredinnick has often shown that he doesn’t need other parliamentarians to make him sound stupid. In one particularly enlightening speech – on the ‘evidence’ for alternative medicine – he wanders off the reservation completely.
“Another issue is the introduction of evidence-based practice, which tries to specify the way in which professionals or other decision makers should make decisions. Naturally, as its name suggests, it places a greater emphasis on evidence. The practice guide, however, asks for evidence-based design and development decisions to be made after reviewing information from repeated, rigorous data-gathering. That militates against complementary and alternative medicine, where there may not be a huge number of rigorous or repeated databases to work from. There is not a vast quantity of studies and that has been used against complementary medicine as an excuse. The methodology of assessing CAM might also be unfamiliar to primary care trusts. It might also be difficult to record accurately exactly how homeopathy, for example, treats. It is always different for individual patients, and that can be difficult to record. Sometimes, the treatments require a combination of remedies.
My next point is that homeopathy does not fit normal—that is, orthodox—methods of assessment. For example, the scale of prescribing is in reverse so that the weaker the dose, the more powerful or effective it is. That subject has always been hotly disputed by many doctors, but homeopathic treatments have been operating on the reverse scale of prescribing for 200 years. Some of the most powerful—the constitutional remedies—are so diluted that they can hardly be detected. There are similar problems with acupuncture and its acceptance, as some doctors and commissioners do not necessarily believe in meridians. The same issue occurs with herbs that are unknown in this country.”
Apart from the frankly loopy last paragraph (I find it impossible to believe that anyone could listen to his explanation of the “reverse scale of prescribing” and be convinced), my favourite part is his argument that the lack of evidence for alternative medicine might be used “as an excuse” for PCTs not to use it to treat patients. Unless I’m missing something, treatment decisions are taken on the basis of evidence that they work. Alternative medicine isn’t used to treat patients for the same reason that, say, cream cheese isn’t used to treat patients: there is no evidence that it is an effective clinical treatment.
Ben Goldacre, in his brilliant Bad Science blog, has long treated David Tredinnick as exemplary peddler of pseudoscience in public life, and, for anyone who’s interested, there is plenty more on him there. Personally, it makes me sad that the people of Bosworth have voted him in to Parliament on five occasions. Anyway, it is in this context that Tredinnick’s parliamentary expense claims, along with those of every other MP, have been published in full. Alongside the by-now-expected second home claim and £7,000 per year phone bill (no doubt essential for communicating with the good people of Bosworth), Tredinnick has made a rare unique claim: £210 for software from a new age astrology company and £300 on tuition sessions from the firm, Crucial Astro Tools, to learn to use it.
A quick visit to www.crucialastrotools.co.uk (and I highly recommend it for all your astrology needs), reveals that to spend £210 he must have bought the whole shop: from Solar Maps 3 (“complete tools for the locational astrologer”) to the £19 Galastro and £15 Astrological Mandalas (apparently, the world of astrology is even allowed to invent its own words!). Well, I hope he got good parliamentary use out of them – if £300-worth of tuition didn’t at least ensure that I’m inclined to demand my money back.
David Tredinnick is, unfortunately, not retiring at the next election; and, with a 5,319 majority even in the context of an overall Labour victory, it looks like the citizens of Bosworth will stand up and be counted once more. I look forward to many more years of spurious nonsense from this man’s good offices.
The thing you have to remember about his constituents is that Bosworth contains no proper habitation. Coalville used to be a proper industrial town, but now is a hell hole. Hinckley, I would describe as a one horse town, except that I think that the horse got colic and died. It’s a horrible contrast between hick central and the pathetic aspirational middle class bits of rural England. Of course he’s into holistic medicine.
One thing I don’t understand about other people’s voting patterns is: I pick the party I like the least (of the major parties) and vote for the party that has the best chance of beating them. Quickly perusing the electoral results for Bosworth (gracias Wikipedia) I see that there were about 25,000 votes cast which weren’t for the Tories or UKIP and only 22,000 for them. How is this guy even in office?
Because there was no concerted effort to drive them to one other party. Until now….anyone fancy campaigning for the Loonies in Bosworth?
The case of David Tredinnick MP highlights the bizarre fact that you don’t need any academic or business qualifications to be an MP. You’d think that an ‘A’ level in politics or history would be a good start.
In an ideal world, I’d really like politicians to take some kind of test* to demonstrate basic skills. Numeracy, scientific methods, ethics, logic, business and history spring to mind. I would not be surprised if many current MPs failed these, although I’m sure many would absolutely ace them.
I think the problem is more obvious in the USA, where voters chose Bush as the guy most easy to relate to, despite obviously being the less capable candidate**. To their credit, they’ve now gone full-circle and elected a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. In the UK, we should be doing well with Dr Gordon Brown (politics, Edinburgh) but the cabinet ministers do not have any particular expertise in their departments, which I find surprising. Shouldn’t a former doctor be in charge of the NHS? Shouldn’t someone with experience as an educator be running education? Thank goodness David Tredinnick MP isn’t minister for Science.
Anyway, thanks for another good post, cheers!
* I know that everyone takes GCSEs and ‘A’ levels, but I think we’d all admit to losing a lot of that knowledge rapidly after leaving school, and three mediocre ‘A’ levels in unrelated subjects doesn’t tell you very much.
** I am glossing over the fact that mere academic excellence is not enough to chose who you want leading the country. But it is certainly necessary, if not sufficient.
The Bush thing is a big problem with what is otherwise one of the good ideas for making politics more engaging: having open primaries. The primary system can easily see the biggest showman – the candidate with the most ‘star power’ – put into a position of enormous power. In the UK Bush would never have been anything other than a ridiculed back-bencher, with only party colours seeing him elected in the first place.
You are absolutely right about the lack of specific expertise within the cabinet. Ed Balls, for example, is an economist – and very clearly sees the DCSF gig as a stepping stone to Chancellorship. I’m not convinced by the argument that the Secretary of State is merely the public face of a department, and that senior civil servants with sector-specific expertise create policy: many, many policy decisions are made by the SoS, who (even with the best faith in the world) may be making them for completely the wrong reasons.
It seems that David Tredinnick does have some qualification, I think you are a bit harsh on him. When Tories come to power (if) they may well put him in the position of a High Magus or some such; based on his interest in astrology and on the amount of money he spent on telephone calls at the same time when he bought the software (what was so urgent to consult astrology?) it seems obvious that he considers this the only way to salvation. And he may well be able to tell us all how to solve the problems that will help us save whatever there is to save: marriages, for example…
If there is such a thing where people get trained for the position of High Magus or Hierophant: magical kind of school, then people like Mr Tredinnick would probably be very welcome and be looked upon as an exotic creature from the real world. Well. So what would we call such a place? Golden Temple, or even Golden Dawn? Dawn of a new society, where love is free, where the mistress is your soul mate and you both train in the art of magic to bypass the annoying husband (probably an engineer, too scientifically minded kind of chap) and a … well who knows what kind of wife. And who cares? Mistress obviously not.